Kawatan on the Move

My yesterday was supposed to be a mundane one but it all changed as the evening came because I read a comment from madam @Ruffa about my articles here on readcash plagiarized by a user with the handle name @merilie on Hive.

It was not the first time that my articles here on readcash has been plagiarized, it's over a year ago when someone made an account copying even my profile photo here and posted it there on Hive. That user was not caught until @bmjc98 had shared about these stolen articles which earned a lot! Check out the article here: Someone Stole My AxieBCH-Related Articles And Made Money On Hive

So, yesterday, I checked the article which Ruffa sent me and I found the user had not stolen just one article but she copied six! The introduction was even copied from another user here on readcash who's also on Hive @charmingcherry08 .

From there, I noticed comments from TP tagging me about verifying if the photos are mine. He is familiar with Matti and so when he saw one of the images bearing Matti's face, he knew right then and there that this is a stolen article. I am glad that he was quick to share the links to the Hiveph community's discord channel and since a lot of our readcash friends are also on Hive, they confirmed that those are really stolen articles.

Thanks a lot to Cindee and Wittyzel for such quick actions and on the same night, they spread the information to a lot of other users to help downvote the account.

Downvoting was perhaps an act that I didn't imagine doing until last night. I downvoted the user's articles, all of them. My friend @caryl also did her own way of helping out and messaged our friends from different groups about helping out with the downvotes.

Just before the user could receive a payout, the account had been flagged and now has a reputation of -3 with all of the articles getting zero earnings. The articles are also muted.

Could the Thief Be A Filipino ReadCash User?

There's a huge possibility that the person who did this is indeed a Filipino because his/her comments include grammatically correct Tagalog sentences.

Perhaps this person is lurking here to steal more articles! I don't know how we can avoid this but I hope if that person is reading this now, I hope you learn your lesson now and not do this again.

This happening plus the blackout here in our place was adding up to my stress level. Anyway, as a content writer, I know that plagiarism is rampant in the online realm, these posers are desperate but we all know this act is not okay, it is not good and sooner or later, it will be caught.

Next Steps

I used to add watermarks on my images sooner, but I got tired of doing so with the recent stealing, I am now thinking of putting my watermarks again. This will be tedious for sure. How about you guys? Do you think it is worth it to put watermarks on our pictures?

Thanks for reading this article! Check out my previous articles too:

• City of Lechon

• Paolito's STK Ta Bai!

• Henann's Seabreeze, Overnight in Panglao, and Buffet at Prawn Farm

• How To Cashout STEEM to Philippine Peso (GCash) with Binance

xoxo,

momentswithmatti

Mother | Boholana | Cebu | Philippines | Travel | Photography Enthusiast | Calligraphy | Art | Crypto Noob

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